Final Fantasy 7 Remake (and the big fuss about it)

Last week has been phenomenal to say the least, to all veteran gamers out there, especially my generation. Throats were burning with screams of disbelief, eyes were tearing down and hands were trembling and waving all at once, and for a very good reason. Final Fantasy VII, the legend of all video games, the masterpiece that was once what all young men and women were busy with ever since its release on PC in 1997, will witness the dreadfully-long-awaited remake in 2015-2016, using top notch technology with unbeatable graphics and the ever-reputable soundtrack scores.

What's with all the fuss about Final Fantasy VII though? Let me break it down for you.

It won't take a lot of google to know that FF7 is by far The Greatest Game of All Time and that is for very specific reasons. The operatic, labyrinthine and often wonderfully weird tale of eco-minded heroes out to save their living planet from corporate energy raiders proved the most popular in the series, selling over 10 million copies worldwide and raising the bar for all games of that era, and the ones to come. The Final Fantasy series is one of the most significant franchises in video game history, responsible for numerous games that were both profound and critically adored. The series is also a veritable road map for how console role-playing games have progressed through multiple console generations. Though fans of the franchise will argue until the last breath about which of the many great Final Fantasy games is the best, the name that frequently rises to the top of those discussions is the franchise's most influential game, Final Fantasy VII.

Reasons for that can be elaborated with ease:

1. The Story: FF7 has by far the best, most captivating story ever embedded in a video game. The game juggles the player along the threads of love and hate, passion and desire, anger and affection, and the list goes on. If there's anything the makers of FF7 have excelled with, it would definitely be the story.
2. The Music: Anything from the opening music, to the in-game sound clips, the redundantly joyful scores and to the fighting music, the overall operatically enchanting scores of FF7 left an eternal trace in the video games industry. Composed and produced by the renowned Nobuo Uematsu, who had chosen MIDI as format for the music at the time, the FF7 scores were arranged and played by an orchestra. The original music received highly positive reviews from critics, who found many of the tunes to be memorable and noted the emotional intensity of several of the tracks. Many tracks were also performed individually in concerts and have been highly appraised.
3. The Characters: I would definitely confess the team who has done the effort to design and create all those characters is a team of all-stars, champs of their time. Starting out with the main character, Cloud Strife.
4. The Graphics/Cinematics: The game's true wealth, and the most visual one, is no doubt in the graphics, and more importantly the cinematics for the time. FF7 made its debut on PC CD-Roms with fully-designed 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds. But it is arguably the FMV (Full Motion Videos) cinematics that are most often remembered, the length and power of which gave Final Fantasy VII its potency, and it's what remains at the core of its legacy even now.
5. The Mini-Games/Quests.
6. The World.
7. The Gameplay/Mechanics.
8. CHOCOBOS!
9. And the list goes on.

Cloud & Aerith

And if that is not enough to realize how impeccably galatically Final Fantasy major was, check this out. Recognized by fans the world over, Final Fantasy VII frequently graces the top of "fan favorites" lists, including the reader-driven GameFAQs' Best Character, Best Villain, and Best Game Ever summer poll contests, which have had Cloud Strife, Sephiroth, and Final Fantasy VII coming in at the top of their respective categories year after year. Square Enix, too, recognizes the series' potential and has built an entire universe of games around Final Fantasy VII. The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII consists of spin-off games in the same universe on a host of different platforms, as well as the Final Fantasy VII movie, Advent Children. There's no game that has a better chance of success than Final Fantasy VII, as it's the first franchise to kick off Square Enix's new experimental concept of "polymorphic content."

That is definitely - to me at least - what makes Final Fantasy VII the game of the century.

Jumping back to days ago when Square Enix rocked the entire world of RPG gaming and the entire fanbase of Final Fantasy world by intriguingly putting it to the world in a very theatrical and well played manner for the level of its audience: The Final Fantasy VII Remake is Officially Confirmed, bashing out all those who have been booing down the game along the years claiming the hopes of all fans to remain as merely dreams, and most importantly, reviving the hope of thousands and thousands of those teenage fans who grew up now 18 years later to become adults totally losing it at the E3 announcement after they have been, for years, secretly wishing for a Remake of the game that marked history for them. (I have personally seen the clip over 10 times, I still believe it's a sort of a dream).

I personally can never forget the endless nights I spent playing the game, the times I forgot to eat and the quests I would just take for the sake of filling up that insatiable satisfaction meter of mine at the time. 

As you may have expected, that whole generation of gamers all over the world had the eyes fixed to their screens while Sony was announcing the remake. I myself was close to flipping the desk off if it hadn't my laptop resting on it back then, goosebumps all over my body and eyes filling up with water, can never deny that at all. Feeling still in shock of what I had seen I ran out to YouTube to try and tap the waters, see if I was the only one. Here's some of what I have found:



As one Square Enix's Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase had declared earlier in 2014, and I quote:

“But should I ever take it on, it would have to be the biggest project I’ve done. My life work. So I would have to be as highly motivated as that to end up with something I’m very happy with. It’s a huge thing for me.”

I guess my work is done here, I'll just leave you to some of the reactions for what followed the announcement.